The course builds on my Introduction to Financial Accounting course, which you should complete first. In this course, you will learn how to read, understand, and analyze most of the information provided by companies in their financial statements. These skills will help you make more informed decisions using financial information.

From the lesson

Week 8: Deferred Taxes

There are two certainties in life, and we will cover one of them this week (the other is beyond the scope of the course). We will NOT teach you how to prepare your own tax return. Instead, we will discuss how companies have to prepare "two sets of books": their financial statements and their tax returns. The rules are different for these two sets of books, leading to permanent differences and to temporary differences. We will cover both types of differences, with a main focus on "deferred taxes", which are the byproduct of temporary or timing differences between tax reporting and financial reporting. Finally, we will touch on other tax issues, such as Net Operating Loss Carryforwards and the rule that requires companies to disclose how much they are trying to cheat on their taxes (sorry, that should say "use tax planning strategies to manage their taxable income").